I have in my hand a copy of the very first Vegan Times.
Dated November 1944 it is the first instance in which Donald Watson and his
associates first began to use the term Vegan- as a contraction of the word
vegetarian.
Sixty five years later, I would make the switch myself.
Having gorged myself to the morbidly obese section of an NHS wallchart, something
had to give, although I never intended becoming vegan. I never intended even to
stick at vegetarianism but, as with all good journeys, I couldn’t just forget
things I had found along the way. My parents assumed it was an eating disorder.
I still get quips from members of the family when we gather for occasions but,
to steal a phrase from a real disorder: Nothing actually tastes as good as
vegan feels.
I had started out simply trying to cook my own meals, but with
slightly healthier food. I decided that the processed gunge was doing me no
good at all and so for a New Year challenge I opted to cook vegetarian for a
month. That month, with all of its bacon cravings and skipped kebab shops was
tough, I can’t lie, though I knew I could get through on my own convictions
having navigated my way through Lent (in a chocolate shop) the year before.
As the month went on, I started to feel markedly better in
myself. It sounds incredibly naïve having scoffed my way through most types of
meat I had encountered for 23 years, but I didn’t actually realise just how
reliant we were on animals in our diet. Today’s food isn’t the meat and two veg
stuff of our ancestors. These days food has a peel top lid, a ring pull or a
healthy ding to announce its arrival. There isn’t a quarter pound of cow arse
in your burger and yet surprisingly, there is a healthy measure of it in your
soft drink. Go figure.
It was only through reading the labels and finding more and
more information about the ingredients in my food that I began to see the huge
amount of additives involved in the process. I had made the switch
subconsciously and not even realised it. By the time I had finished January, I’d
survived. I actually felt a satisfaction in the achievement- leading me to ask
if I could continue as I was and reduce the need to kill the animals even
further. Nobody who knew eighteen stone me would have believed it.
I had what Paul McCartney described as ‘a kind of epiphany’.
The realisation that I could go on to live without the need for any suffering
or slaughter was a game changer. I didn’t know where the eggs in my food came
from because logically, I hadn’t even realised they were in all those packets.
I didn’t know how healthy the cows were because I’d never even considered
emailing Walkers to ask about their salt and vinegar crisps (I know, whey?). What I did know was that the risk wasn’t worth
it. I wouldn’t eat a scraggy looking cow or chicken so why should I buy eggs
from the same dodgy farmer. I took it as a challenge to push it that extra bit further and abandon
these products completely- starting with just one day a week, my Vegan Thursdays.
I did two, having so much left over on the second week that
it continued into Friday and Saturday and here we are four years later. In all
of that time I have missed meat, of course I have, but I haven’t necessarily
craved it.
I can still taste the kangaroo I had on holiday, the venison
I ate in that fancy restaurant, the steak on my birthday but, with the
understanding that I am making this conscious choice each time I choose
something different on the menu, I can imagine each of the little buggers
fleeing over the abattoir fence to live another day.
That is a hell of a liberating experience, let me tell you.
It is worth not eating proper melty cheese for. It is worth not eating shop
bought cakes for. It is certainly worth not eating meat for.
To conclude then, I’ll ask you all to plan one completely vegetarian
day next time you go shopping. Have your coffee black, jam on your toast, your lunchtime
jacket potato topped with salad & beans instead of cheese and for dinner,
any of a thousand different vegetable curries soups or stews.
Seems so easy, yes? Compared to what you could have killed, guilt
free is a bloody good feeling before bedtime, just trust me on this.
Thanks for reading,
S ;)
S ;)
1 comments:
All power to you.
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